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Switch to Forum Live View Are the towns a little.... puny?
4 years ago  ::  Mar 26, 2009 - 10:48PM #1
BobTheConquerer
Date Joined: Mar 26, 2009
Posts: 8
From what I've heard the D&D world is a vast trackless wasteland, and town are "points of light" in the darkness. Something that I found kind of odd is that all the villages are still innocent farming towns. I would think they would need a much more Spartan lifestyle, or at least a big fence.

I mean, wouldn't the first level 5 monster to wander by just wipe out all the lvl1 farmers?
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 26, 2009 - 10:55PM #2
TheOOB
Date Joined: Sep 5, 2006
Posts: 20
Well, some of the points of light are bigger then others.

To be fair, there really isn't a core D&D 4e setting, there is just a collection of things that are not really setting specific. You are free to color your world any way you want.
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 26, 2009 - 11:01PM #3
Decivre
Date Joined: Apr 7, 2007
Posts: 6,177

BobTheConquerer wrote:

From what I've heard the D&D world is a vast trackless wasteland, and town are "points of light" in the darkness. Something that I found kind of odd is that all the villages are still innocent farming towns. I would think they would need a much more Spartan lifestyle, or at least a big fence.

I mean, wouldn't the first level 5 monster to wander by just wipe out all the lvl1 farmers?


No it wouldn't, because you're there. Duh! :D

Seriously though, this is intentional for the style of heroic fantasy. The idea is to make the PCs necessary and vital to the setting as saviors.

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4 years ago  ::  Mar 26, 2009 - 11:01PM #4
BobTheConquerer
Date Joined: Mar 26, 2009
Posts: 8
I have some ideas for some towns full of warriors. Like the town where just about every citizen is an arcane magician. Would make an interesting hometown for the wild mage sorcerer who was.... encouraged to go adventuring.
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 26, 2009 - 11:22PM #5
DaidojiTaidoru
Date Joined: Sep 28, 2006
Posts: 3,105

BobTheConquerer wrote:

I would think they would need a much more Spartan lifestyle, or at least a big fence.


I'd imagine even the smallest of them do have a low wall and a 2nd or 3rd level Sheriff, along with some 1st level help. And everyone can serve as a minion in a pinch. But yeah you're hoping the adventurers show up and save the day before your village becomes some other adventurer's tragic backstory.

Well...  At least we got custom avatars....
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 26, 2009 - 11:30PM #6
BobTheConquerer
Date Joined: Mar 26, 2009
Posts: 8
True true. I suppose a level 3 party couldn't really do much that a town of level 7 warriors couldn't do for themselves. You'll have to wait till paragon tier to save their butts.
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 27, 2009 - 2:36AM #7
Arcane_Guyver
Date Joined: Nov 13, 2004
Posts: 1,954
Unintelligent Heroic-tier monsters don't raid these small villages because they just see a lot of people living there. They may just be peasants, but still a perceived threat. Paragon & Epic tier monsters, on the other hand...they eat such villages for breakfast. Thankfully, these creatures aren't exactly common.

Intelligent monsters usually don't raid these small villages because it's often more profitable to keep them around, take what the monsters want as they need it. Crazy intelligent monsters are the rare exception, as they may decide to wipe a village out just because.

At least, that's my understanding of it all. These villages tend to have meager defenses, but manage to get by. It's only when they try to expand or accidentally stick their noses into places they shouldn't be (cutting down trees under fey protection, mining in kobold territory, etc) that they call down the thunder, so to speak.

When I think of the 4e assumed world, I envision the feudal lands seen in Inu-Yasha. Little farming villages surrounded by dense wood, teeming with magical and often unsavory lifeforms that could totally annihilate the humans if they really tried.
4e D&D is not a "Tabletop MMO." It is not Massively Multiplayer, and is usually not played Online. Come up with better descriptions of your complaints, cuz this one means jack ****.
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 27, 2009 - 7:48AM #8
Rovin
Date Joined: Feb 8, 2009
Posts: 2,549
The DMG-standard populations are absurdly small all across the board. Europe at the peak of the Black Plague wasn't as sparsely populated as the 4E setting, and yet the world is crawling with monsters and hordes of "uncivilized" bad guy races. Suspending disbelief is nigh-impossible without taking every population limit and multiplying it by a factor of ten.

Hard to do epic fantasy when a multiplanar "metropolis" like Sigil has a smaller population than my home town.
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 27, 2009 - 8:13AM #9
fjw70
Date Joined: Sep 15, 2006
Posts: 1,982
I am running the KotS for my son right now. The city in there is walled. My back story has this town as just one of a loose alliance of towns in the region. The villagers told him that since the empire pulled out of the area about 100 years ago it isn't uncommon for small bands of kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc. to raid the area, but the local militias do a pretty good job stopping or deterring such bands.

Lately the humaniod incursions have been getting worse. About a year prior to the campaign starting an orc army party come into the area and was defeated by the combined militias of all the local towns and the towns are still recovering from it.

Now with the latest reports of goblins and wolves (I replaced the kobold with goblins and wolves) making themselves at home in the area (instead of raiding and moving on) the twons are getting very nervous and have hired my son's character to help rid the area of these vermin.
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4 years ago  ::  Mar 27, 2009 - 8:27AM #10
Hocus-Smokus
Date Joined: Apr 12, 2008
Posts: 7,209

Rovin wrote:

Hard to do epic fantasy when a multiplanar "metropolis" like Sigil has a smaller population than my home town.


Manual of the Planes, page 25:

"Population: Approximately 250,000. Representatives of nearly every race and monstrous kind can be found somewhere in the city."

Dude...you have one seriously large home town. My own only has about 80,000 permanent residents (not counting the snowbirds that are only here for the winter...I live on the beach in Florida).

In fond memory of Mark "Wrecan" Monack.
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